18 



Mice, and looks like chooolate, but tastes much more like 

 coffee. It is not oily on the surface, and there is little 



or no sediment. Kola, indeed, excels both coffee and choco- 

 late in solubility, for it yields up its properties to cold watery 

 infusions, to hot infusions, and to decoctions. The starchy 

 matters it contains impart smoothness and a slight thickness 

 to the decoction, but starch is not taken up by the cold in- 

 fusion. The decoction, or preparation by boiling, must be 

 held to be the most nutritious form and also the most econo- 

 mical. Milk and sugar are acceptable and even necessary 

 additions, which of course add to its nutritive power. 



Made in this form, kola-coffee is quite as stimulant as 

 coffee, and is more so if made of the same weight. For 

 nutritiveness it may be compared to chocolate, which, how- 

 ever, it much surpasses; but the absence of oily globules, 

 which float on the surface of strong chocolate, makes the 

 kola beverage more acceptable to fastidious stomachs. The 

 starch, combined as it is with a little cocoa-butter or fat, and 

 blended as it is with another form of starch that has been 

 converted into the sugar of glucose, is certainly extremely 

 bland and highly digestible; and the prospects are that 

 this beverage, when made of limited strength, will be found 

 suitable to the most delicate invalids. It is admirably ad- 

 apted to the stage of gastric irritability in all fevers, to the 

 irritable stomach in delirium tremens, and to the first efforts 

 of the stomach on recovering from prolonged nausea. In 

 nerve-exhaustion it promises to become one of the best restor- 

 atives. In the brain-torpor consequent on narcotic poisoning, 

 as by opium, a stimulant dose of kola decoction is likely to 

 prove an effective antidote. 



7 he kola-nut is so very soluble that it may readily be 

 prepared into medicated wines, medicinal tinctures, and 

 fluid extracts, and also into chocolate, but the latter of 

 course involves more trouble than preparing it as coffee. 

 Prepared as a paste after the manner of chocolate, we have, 

 however, a right to call it chocolate, for though it tastes of 

 coffee, it nevertheless contains theobromine, starch, and a 

 little cocoa-fat,which are the leading constituents of chocolate. 

 The maker should introduce additional pure cocoa-butter, 

 also aroraatics, such as nutmeg, mace, cassia, or cinnamon 

 and cloves, to suit the tast \ It is to be expected that when 

 the preparation of chocolate from kola becomes an object 

 w T ith manufacturers, great improvements will ensue as a 

 result of their skill and experience. Kola-nut is also likely to 

 come into use amongst grocers as a means for fortifying 

 weak or adulterated coffees. 



Mr. Thomas Christy, of London, recently exhibited at 

 the Manchester Royal Jubilee Exhibition a chocolate-paste 



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